


don't know anything but i know i miss you

by rayguntomyhead



Category: folklore - Taylor Swift (Album)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Bisexual Character, F/F, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Lesbian Character, Mention of Potential Polyamorous Relationships, Multi, POV Female Character, Queer Themes, minor references to homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayguntomyhead/pseuds/rayguntomyhead
Summary: “Well hey there, Elizabeth,” she says, and her voice comes out surprisingly nonchalant. Guess her carefully cultivated LA façade holds true even now, which is a good thing because damn. Betty still looks as stupidly gorgeous as she did ten years ago. “C’mon, Thea, don’t be like that,” Betty says, lips pursing into a stupidly cute little moue. “Way to sound like my mother. Elizabeth, honestly.”Or Betty, James and Dorothea five years after folklore
Relationships: Betty & James & Narrator of August (Dorothea), Betty/Narrator of August (Dorothea), James/Narrator of August (Dorothea), betty/james
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	don't know anything but i know i miss you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moebius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!! Since folklore's sister album evermore came out, I used Dorothea as the name of the Narrator of August. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for the amazing prompt. :) <3

The stupid café sounds exactly like Dorothea remembers. Down to the tinny echo of 80s pop hits played over ancient speakers, the rowdy, rasping laughter of random truckers huddled over their coffees, the bright, cheery drawl of the waitress as she bustled between tables. Dorothea could close her eyes, and almost forget it’d been a decade since the last time she’d wedged herself on top of one of the cracked leather bar stools.

She wraps her hands tighter around her mug, winds her feet around the bar stool legs. It’s late. The edges of her carefully straightened hair are starting to frizz in the Southern humidity. There’s a perfectly good hotel room with her name on it and its very own crappy coffee maker five minutes away and yet here she is. Tucked in the back corner of Marjorie’s Place, on Christmas Eve, alone. Wishing, wondering why she came back.

“Hey there, stranger.”

Oh, _fuck._ Dorothea’s shoulders stiffen beneath the protective cocoon of her wool jacket, fingers tightening around her mug. Her eyes close, body frozen for an achingly long pause before she unclenches her hands and twists on the stool just enough she can face the person behind her.

“Well hey there, Elizabeth,” she says, and her voice comes out surprisingly nonchalant. Guess her carefully cultivated LA façade holds true even now, which is a good thing because damn _._ Betty still looks as stupidly gorgeous as she did five years ago, the outline of her body slowly fading out in Dorothea’s rearview mirror. Her ridiculous curls still stick up every which way they please, bangs half falling on her face, and she still wears sweaters three sizes too big like she makes a habit of stealing them from her non-existent boyfriend. They certainly weren’t James’ – she was shorter than Betty and Dorothea by several inches and far too into cool-girl leather-jacket look to ever risk dressing in a way that could be described as _adorable_. 

“C’mon, Thea, don’t be like that,” Betty says, lips pursing into a stupidly cute little moue. “Way to sound like my mother. _Elizabeth_ , honestly.”

“Can’t be like anyone else,” Dorothea says. “Besides, you’ve never looked like a Betty. Maybe a Beth. Or an Ellie. Lizzie? No, too 90s pop star.”

“And between the two of us, _I’m_ not the one who’s been on TV,” Betty says primly. “Besides, I think I look exactly like a Betty. I’ve been one for twenty three years.”

Dorothea hikes a shoulder up, waving a hand dismissively.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I still say my point stands.”

Betty rolls her eyes.

“ _Anyway,_ ” she says. “I don’t remember hearing you’d be back in town.”

“Astounding,” Dorothea drawls. “A nugget of gossip this town didn’t get their hands on.”

Betty bites her lip, arms crossing. Abruptly, Dorothea winces. Every time. Every time she has to go and open her big mouth and start something, stupid, _stupid,_ it isn’t supposed to be like this anymore. It’s been years, leave the past in the past, yada yada. But something about Betty’s always done this to her. God, you’d think that after everything that’s happened, the years stretched out between them, every glamorous woman Dorothea’s romanced, every guy she’s tumbled into bed with that this… whatever it was between them wouldn’t _matter_ this much anymore.

But. It did. It does.

“Well,” Betty says. “I didn’t know. You know your mother wouldn’t have said anything.”

She’s worrying at the sleeve of her cardigan. Gonna start pulling out threads soon, big brown eyes getting sadder and goddamit. Fine.

“My perfect mother? Admit to my sinful, sinful existence?” Dorothea says. “C’mon, pull up a stool. Sit. I can’t have a conversation with you hovering over my shoulder.”

She swivels back around to face the bar and knocks back another mouthful of horrible coffee. It goes down bitter and flat like only cheap coffee does, only slightly tempered by the half packet of sweetener.

“You want a drink?” she says, raising her hand just enough to catch the bartender’s attention. For a moment, Betty doesn’t move and Dorothea wonders if that’s it, if Betty would take the loss and make her awkward excuses. But a beat later the stool next to her creaks as Betty settles onto it, scooting it closer to the countertop with the tips of her toes so she can cross her arms and slouch forward onto it.

The bartender ambles closer, nodding affably.

“Mint julep, virgin, please,” Betty chirps. Dorothea rolls her eyes.

“You do know you’re legal now,” she says. “You could get a drink with actual alcohol in it like a actual adult.”

“I could _,_ ” Betty says amicably, and doesn’t change her order. It makes something in Dorothea’s chest twists and twinge. She downs another mouthful of coffee, and wishes it was whiskey.

“James hasn’t turned you into a beer snob by now?” she says. “I expected with her as your other half you’d be lecturing me about the superiority of IPAs or some shit by now.”

That’d always been a James thing, before James really should have had a thing related to alcohol. Most high schoolers barely had thoughts about beer besides ‘lots’ but James had practically been born a hipster. It was one of the things Dorothea had loved about her back in high school, she'd seemed so _cool,_ so _different_ from everyone else in Tupelo with her vintage tees and 501 jeans and devil-may-care grin when she threw herself into the car next to Dorothea's side. 

"Oh. I–” Betty says, voice small. “I thought you. I thought you knew.”

Abruptly all the awkward charade of camaraderie drops away and that’s not… that’s not what Dorothea expected. She looks up from her glass but Betty isn’t looking back, just staring down as she traces the swirls of wood grain under the lacquered bar top.

“Didn’t know _what_ ,” Dorothea says.

“James and I– um. We’re not. James is a guitarist now,” Betty says, weirdly avoidant as she fidgets with the drink the bartender just silently slid in front of her. “She’s about to do a tour on the West Coast. You know how she used to write songs, she ended up starting a band in college and they’re doing pretty well now.”

Dorothea’s lungs seized. Not at James in a band, honestly James was the sort of person that you met and took in the tattoos and the glasses and the Doc Martins and thought _yeah, of course she’s in a band._ She probably looks like a lesbian Bruce Springsteen now, playing her guitar all soulful at the front of shitty dive bars, coming home after to her vintage records and artisan cigars to drink wine out of a mason jar and debate gender theory.

“How’s long-distance working gonna work for you then?” Dorothea says, “Or are you both just in town for the weekend?”

“We’re,” Betty says. “Um. James and I, we’re… um, we’re not together like that, exactly.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Dorothea stares down at the murky amber of her drink.

“We talked about it,” Betty says. “After– um, after. But it was one of those things, you know? We were the only two out at our high school after your mom transferred you, I was there, and we clicked, and it was good! We got each other, and we still hung out after James apologized for... everything, but we just. Didn’t. It wasn’t the same.”

“Fuck, Betty,” Dorothea says. “I’m. Shit. I’m sorry.”

Betty shakes her head, lips quirking up as she leans over to nudge Dorothea with her shoulder.

“Don’t be,” she says. “It actually turned into something better, I think. After everything blew up and you left, James’ dad kicked her out so we ended up getting a place together because she couldn’t afford one alone. It’s just… I think James was in love with the _idea_ of us. You know?”

The bartender ghosts over to set Betty’s ridiculous virgin drink in front of her and Betty hugs it close, toying with the sprig of mint sitting jauntily in the top.

“Yeah,” Dorothea says. “I know.”

“James loves the romance, the drama of it all, you remember how she was,” Betty says. “It just took her a while to figure out what she wanted. We’ll always be close, she’s like my family now but it didn’t have to be the kind of romantic like it is in the songs, we could have something different and just as good, just as worth having, that I… that we–”

She’s stumbling over her words now, like she has to explain herself, and Dorothea reaches out a hand before she can stop herself and covers Betty’s fist.

“Hey,” she says. “I get it.”

Betty stares at their hands, breathing in a deep and slow and letting it out. Has she had anybody to talk to about this in this shitty, backwater conservative black hole of a place besides James herself? And maybe that’s not fair to the town, but it’s Dorothea’s hometown and she’ll hate it if she wants to.

“I’m glad you and James were able to figure things out,” she says instead. “And good for James for sticking to the most hipster profession she could possibly find.”

Betty startles into a giggle, shoulders relaxing as she turns to look at Dorothea again.

“Of course you’d get it,” she says. “I love Tupelo, most of the time, but…”

“The straights, y’know?” Dorothea says, raising an eyebrow. “It’s different. Are you two still the only ones out of the closet around here?”

Betty mouth ‘the straights’ at her, gives her a flat look.

“You know I’m right,” Dorothea says, squeezing Betty’s hand before pulling reluctantly away.

Betty rolls her eyes, but predictably doesn’t argue. They sit there for a moment in amiable silence, sipping their drinks. Dorothea’s coffee’s almost gone. She could order something stronger. The bartender’s within earshot. Dorothea doesn’t call him over.

“I’ve thought about you, you know,” Betty says abruptly. “Wondering how you’re doing. I saw you in that commercial you did.”

“The perfume one? Yeah, that was okay,” Dorothea says on automatic. “I just auditioned for a new pilot, one with a big-name director, and my agent said there’s a good chance it’s gonna get picked up. Might be my big break.”

“Aw, Thea,” Betty says and smiles, soft and tender, the way she used to smile when her hand cupped Dorothea’s face, the memory flooding back until Dorothea wants nothing more than for her to do it just one more time.

“You wanna get out of here?” Dorothea says abruptly. “I got a place at the Motel 6 downtown, we could catch up, you could tell me all about what you’re up to these days. Give me the lowdown on all the local gossip. Invite James too,” she adds, even though a little voice at the back of her brain is screaming at her that maybe being in hotel room with _both_ her high school crushes is _probably definitely_ a bad idea.

That’s not what she really wants, what she _wants_ is to watch Betty slip again into the passenger seat of the rusty 80s Mercedes Dorothea ditched as soon as she left Tupelo, the seat where Dorothea told Betty about her and James and held her while she cried. Wants to go back to even further to the warm, humid evenings before the confessions, and realizations, and the stupid love triangle she'd found herself in without meaning to, up at the lookout, drinking the wine James stole from her father’s stash and pretending the summer would never end. Wants to go back to senior year and do it _right_ , wants to stay, talk it out instead of running away, make it work between them all like she'd known back then that was an _option_ to make something work between them all. Wants to leave but this time take the both of them with her.

But she’ll take curling up on the shitty hotel couch with the sound of the rain outside, drinking terrible hotel coffee and listening to Betty sing off-key to whatever new song James is writing now. Hear how they’ve been, what their plans are, if the West Coast tour James is planning on will take them through Los Angles. See if maybe they can all try again. Build something new.

Betty bites her lip, crushing a mint leaf hard enough between her fingers Dorothea can smell the sharp aroma of it, and for a breathless moment Dorothea thinks she’ll say no, she’ll make her excuses and walk away.

“Okay,” Betty says. “Yeah. I’ll text James. Let’s get out of here.”

She drops the mint leaf back in her glass and looks up at Dorothea from under her bangs, biting her lip and looking so achingly, damnably, hopeful. Dorothea grins back, something light and breathless spinning in her chest, and holds out her hand.


End file.
